Islamist Militants Kill Scores in Remote Northeast Nigeria

MAIDUGURI, Nigeria — Suspected Islamist fighters killed at least 90 people in an early morning attack on a village in the remote northeast on Sunday, witnesses said.

Gunmen from the militant group Boko Haram surrounded the village of Izge, near the border with Cameroon, spraying it with bullets, setting off explosions and burning down dozens of houses, they said.

“As I am talking to you now, all the dead bodies of the victims are still lying in the streets,” a resident, Abubakar Usman, said by telephone. “We fled without burying them, fearing the terrorists were still lurking in the bushes.”

Lawal Tanko, the police commissioner of Borno State, where the violence took place, confirmed the attack but said he had no details of the casualties. Another witness, Lawan Madu, said hundreds of residents had fled.

President Goodluck Jonathan ordered extra troops into northeast Nigeria in May to try to crush the insurgents, who want to carve a breakaway Islamic state out of northern Nigeria, which is largely Muslim. But the Islamists simply retreated into the remote, hilly Gwoza area bordering Cameroon, from where they have continued to mount deadly attacks that increasingly target civilians.

Mr. Jonathan faces an election next year, and the persistence of Boko Haram’s almost five-year-old insurgency — despite a costly military operation against it — remains a major headache. Last week, Boko Haram fighters in trucks painted in military colors killed 51 people in an attack on the local government area of Konduga.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A7 of the New York edition with the headline: Islamist Militants Kill Scores in Remote Northeast Nigeria. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe